


And So It Begins

by voices_of_salt



Series: The Riera Cycle [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Bruixes, F/M, Gen, Other, Riera Soul-Twins, The Long Night, The Riera Ancestors, The Vadaen Exodus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 19:24:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9457178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voices_of_salt/pseuds/voices_of_salt
Summary: At the end of The Long Night, after escaping from horror and slavery, two ragged figures stand on a promontory and say a final goodbye.





	

“They will be here at nightfall,” he said.

She did not look away from him, though tears blurred her vision: she was not ashamed to let him see the water she shed for him. He was so beautiful, in that moment, so brave, with the light of their last day together soft and golden on his skin. Their last day together, and truly they’d had so few, so few.

“I know you can do this,” he said, and took her hands in his. His dear, strong hands, scarred and rough, but they’d always touched her so gently. She pressed them to her lips, kissing them, letting her tears bathe the blood-stiff bandages. She laid her cheek upon those familiar hands and let out a long, shuddering sigh as she watched the setting sun slowly set the west aflame.

Now that she was not looking at him, she found her voice again: “I never thought I would have to do it alone. I could not have dreamed of any of it without imagining the two of us forging this new life together.”

“Please,” he said, voice breaking and so filled with pain that she gasped and shut her eyes against the sunlight, as if there might be some return, some retreat in the dark behind her eyelids. “Be strong for me, love, or I—”

She threw her arms around him, holding him so tightly that her arms ached, her hands bunching the ragged fabric of his tunic in her fists. _You will not take him, too!_ she wanted to shout,  _You take everything, everything! But he is mine!_

Instead, she held him tighter still, so close that she could hear the thud of his heart in his chest. She could not stop this, not any of it. She could not abandon her people by turning aside to save him. She could not take this choice from him, nor from those brave souls who followed him[. ](http://evry-day-im-tumbling.tumblr.com/post/130358617300/malformalady-red-sand-and-lava-rocks-of-koki)There were no words to say that were not selfish or cowardly. No words, and so she screamed, startling gulls into the air, rising in a shrieking flurry of grey and white wings. She screamed so the sound rang back from the cliffs, echoing over the thunder of the surf. But even that little release could only be indulged for so long, and at last she stopped, curling herself against him, shuddering and hollow.

“I am sorry,” he sobbed, burying his head in the soft waves of her dark hair. He had prayed to never hear her scream like that again. Despite all the hurts he had endured, it flayed his soul to the core to see her so brave and so helpless and fighting still, like a wolf in a trap. She loved so much, and she hurt so much. He had adored that quality in her from the beginning: the defiant passion that dared to love even under the shadow. She had been a fire in the darkness: defiant, damning both horror and death.

He remembered the scent of pale corpseflowers by the river where they first kissed, how beautiful she had been in the torchlight. He thought of the honeycomb she brought him, and the sweetness of it on her soft, smiling lips. He recalled the first time he had woken with her warm and drowsy in his arms. He remembered her screaming in the dark morning, hands scrabbling on the floor where she had fallen at the foot of the empty cradle, dirt under her shattered fingernails and bloody clumps of her own dark hair between her fingers. She had fought him when he took her in his arms, and she had screamed then, too: a high, broken, animal sound that made him shudder, even as his own heart shattered. 

Later, she had come to him, swathed in threadbare black, only her pale face showing in the darkness. She raised one hand, and he saw the deep cut across her palm, deep enough to slash through a lifetime of callouses.

“They shall have no more of my blood,” she said.

And their lives changed again.

She wept with him now, as night darkened the eastern sky and the pale moon showed ever brighter above them.

“I will never love anyone but you,” she said[. ](http://evry-day-im-tumbling.tumblr.com/post/131324588573/raviollies-i-s-a-b-e-l-a-no-one)

She moved in his arms, and he heard her sharp exhalation of pain. Then he gasped as her fingers touched his brow, warm and sticky. She had bitten her own skin, daubing him with the hot blood. The sounds of wind and water seemed to rise in his ears, and he heard her speak in the oldest tongue of their people: ancient words, raw and unweathered.

And, though he did not know the mysteries, he understood the words of sealing and of joining as the magic moved through him: “One heart, one soul, one blood,” she hissed, her teeth and lips red. “Forever.”

He shivered. The spell was simple, with the uncompromised purity of power too great for human understanding. Such powers did not – could not – comprehend the little worlds of the little lives that called upon them.

He touched his hand to bandage across his side, where the blood had long since seeped through. His fingers came away wet with the mortal wound, and he touched them to her brow. “One heart, one soul, one blood,” he whispered as the winds roared around them.

And, though they never met again in life, they were heard, and their prayers were answered.

**Author's Note:**

> And that's how the Riera soul-twin thing began. Be careful what you pray for, right?  
> [And their blood stained the sand.](http://evry-day-im-tumbling.tumblr.com/post/130358617300/malformalady-red-sand-and-lava-rocks-of-koki)


End file.
